The risk of heart attacks is 20% greater on Mondays. Why is that? Dread and anxiety – a serious health crisis. What is the current health of your leadership? Are you fit as a fiddle or at risk for derailment?

This Week’s Edition

Does your leadership need a wellness check? I invite you to assess the health of your leadership with these five questions.

Clarify Your Thinking

Recently, I watched a group of leaders deal with a crisis in their organization that made the pandemic look like a picnic. Their customers were up in arms for a variety of reasons – some warranted, some not. The banter and noise made it hard to truly understand the problem to be solved.  

Sensing their need for leadership support, I penned a letter to them:

·      To stem the tide of leadership doubt

·      Give them an accurate assessment of their leadership

·      Understand their opportunity for significant influence

Team,

Based on your role, your sense of duty and responsibility is admirable. I commend you for your devotion to leadership and desire to positively influence as many in your charge as possible.

Times are hard. Yet, there is more for your leadership than just misery and doubt. You’ve been prepared for such a time as this. There is no other leader in some other room who is a backstop for you. You are it. It’s you!

These challenges are a gift, even though they do not feel like a gift should. These challenges are specifically designed for your skills and talents. You need not play act what you think a leader should do. All you must do is marshal the skills you have and offer them authentically. You lack nothing.

There is more for ground for you to take as you influence the greatest audience possible. You’ve got this. Go forth and lead.

They entered the arena calmly with a steady hand amidst the roiling sea of customer emotion. They executed well, communicated clearly, graciously received criticism and resolved to persevere and find a resolution consistent with their collective mission.  

Thoughts Lead to Actions

As we near the end of the year, it is wise to pause and reflect. Here are five questions to help you assess your leadership health:

1.   Are you spending time with yourself to think about your leadership?

Leadership Thinking Time is an appointment with yourself to pause the day-to-day work and think about your leadership and the business. Stop working IN the business for 60 to 90 minutes a week and work ON the business. 

2.   When was the last time you were intentionally vulnerable with your team?

Your team desperately wants to know you are human. When you share with them in a vulnerable way, they are drawn to you and are more engaged with your leadership. A recent CEO let a little vulnerability slip out at an all-hands meeting. Privately he chided himself for cracking only to find out that his entire team thought it was the best conversation he had had with them in months. Employees are 10 times more likely to recommend their company to others when they experience an open sharing of challenges.

3.   How much time are you spending with your team to truly get to know them?

Work from home and a hybrid environment make organic connections few and far between. Leaders must dedicate intentional time to getting to know their team on a personal and individual level. One leader makes it a point to have lunch with at least one team member a week even if over Zoom. It’s hard to effectively lead those whom you do not know.

4.   How much time are you focused on your own accomplishments versus the aspirations of those whom you lead?

As achievers and do’ers, we often forget that we have hired many just like us. At some point, the leader must turn from achieving to serving. Give the achievers and do’ers who report to you what they need and let them run. If they can do it 80% as well as you, let them.

5.   What are you doing to grow your competency and capacity to lead?

We don’t know what we don’t know. What are you doing today, this week, this quarter to discover something new… something you didn’t know before? The best leaders are continuous learners.

Boost Your Performance

Is your leadership approach and concomitant results healthy? Check in with yourself. Welcome the leadership wellness check with open arms to affirm what you are doing well and to consider what could be added next year.

What’s Your Opinion?

Thank you to Bryan Dunagan for offering this framework of five questions which I have altered to apply to leaders. What questions do you ask yourself on a regular basis to assess your leadership health? Send them to me at: robin.pou@robinpou.com.

Don’t let doubt count you out. Have a confident week!

Robin Pou, Chief Advisor and Strategist

If this was helpful, feel free to share it with another leader who needs to defeat doubt and complete their confidence.

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What is “The Confident Leader”?

During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I began a video series called “Panic or Plan?” It was designed to equip leaders to navigate the doubt they experienced and to rise in the confidence they needed to lead during turbulent times. It took off. I then started this newsletter to equip leaders in the same fashion each week for the doubt that crashes across the bow of their leaderSHIP.